I am often having this discussion.

At least a million times a week I think to myself: I am not having this discussion, usually in the midst of said discussion.  Tonight's tete-a-tete revolved around "jamas," specifically the not-wearing/relative yuckiness thereof.  This was 30 minutes after we put him to bed.  For the second time.

"Mama" he calles.

"Ignore it," I whisper to my husband, who is dutifully filling out a survey at our dining room table.  This is how we rock a Saturday night, friends.  

"Maaaaaama" he calls again, "I need to take the 'jamas off!"  

This can't be good.  

I cave.

"What's the matter with your 'jamas?"  I ask him, checking for pee.  

"It's yucky stuff," he responds decisively.  "Yucky stuff."  He points to his footies, which are made to look like tiny polar bear heads.  I know, right?  Adorable!  

I help him take his legs out of the 'jamas.  We examine the polar bears together.  "See?"  I say, "Not yucky.  Those are polar bears."

"I want to wear dinosaur 'jamas," he parries.

Time to negotiate.  

"I will get you dinosaur 'jamas," I nod, "but you HAVE to go to sleep as soon as we get them on.  It's time for sleep."  Apparently we have a deal, but OH NO!  I can't find the dinosaur 'jams.  Ever the quick-thinker, I grab a shirt with an airplane on it.  "Look how cool!"

It is, apparently, NOT that cool.

Oh, but it is!  Let's put it on!

He counters with an exuberant downward facing dog, and a farted dismount.  

Touche.

"I want the polar bear 'jamas."  

Sigh.

Polar bears it is.  I am halfway to the dresser.

"No mama, no mama!  I want the airplane shirt!"

It is 9:30 on a Saturday night.  

I am not having this discussion.

anything goes, anymore.

Actual conversation held via telephone with an actual library patron:

Me: Hello, *Library Patron, I'm returning your call regarding some fines you wished to discuss.

LP: Yes! Thank you for getting back to me. I heard you were just on maternity leave. Is today your first day back?

Me: Oh, yes...

LP: That's hard. It's hard, isn't it? Is this is your first? Or your second? Or third?

Me: Uh, my first...

LP: I have FIVE.

Me: Wow...

LP: Yes. That's why I'm talking to you on the phone. I was going to wait for you, I was waiting at the library for you to get back from lunch, but my son pooped his pants. You understand.

Me: Oh...okay. So, I'm looking at your record...

LP: Yes, I returned some items late. It's totally my fault, but I wanted to see if you could reduce some fines for me. Are you breastfeeding?

Me: (confused) Erm, yes.

LP: Do you need a double pump? I mean, you NEED one. Do you have one?

Me: (derailed) Uh... (unable to think on feet) I have one...

LP: Oh good. I know I returned that movie really late. I'm just hoping that you can do something for me. Are you doing your Kegels?

Me: ...........!?!?!??!!??!?!

LP: Because you really need to keep up with them. It's so important. (ernestly) I wish I had been more diligent about them. (intimately) You know what I mean.




*name has been changed to protect the over-sharer.

whistling whilst I work

Yesterday was my first day back at work. I think, more than the knowledge that I would have to go back, I am traumatized that three months has blown by. Being home with the baby has been the most incredible, frustrating, delightful, thrilling, joyful, worrisome, exciting, fulfilling thing I have ever been lucky enough to do. I have never known love like this. It feels dangerous, like I'm teetering on the precipice of sanity. Like I'm an overfilled balloon. My heart is so full that my skin feels stretched and raw; explosion is not only possible, but imminent. It's all I can do not to crush him under the weight of all this FEELING.

Because, let's face it: this kid is perfection. If there's one thing I've learned over the past three months, it's that my husband and I are, like, REALLY good at making babies. We should get some sort of prize, because our progeny is an absolute dreamboat. A real "doll-baby," as the septuagenarian diner at the Waffle House was wont to tell us, each of the approximately seven-billion times that we had to get up and bounce past her to get our little dictator prince to quit squalling and allow us (and our fellow restaurant patrons) to eat our freaking pancakes in some modicum of peace. The reality is, dining disruption notwithstanding, I want to spend all my time with him. He is both adorable and hilarious, a winning combination in my book. He is also changing exponentially every day, sometimes right before our very eyes. It's amazing to watch him slowly make sense of the world, almost as amazing as watching him cram both of his hammy little fists into his mouth.

That's the thing about going back to work, and it's the reason that this three months seems like it's flown by even though it seems like a million years ago that I was pregnant. Every time I get used to him and think that I've figured out this whole parenting thing, he changes. He is a completely different baby than the one I came home with. It is both wonderful and terrible. A week ago he couldn't tell his mobile from a hole in the ground. Today, it's his best friend.

I'm going to miss things. Hell, I miss things when I'm home. But now he is spending his day gracing others with that beatifically infectious grin of his. I worry that I will come home and he will have forgotten me. That he'll look at me with that same bored skepticism with which my cats regard my homecoming. "Oh. It's you. Old Foody McFeedbags. Let's dispense with the niceties. You know what we want." That all the stories I read him, all the songs I made up, all the VOMIT, dear GOD the VOMIT I've born for him will be forgotten in the novelty of the new stay-at-home pal.

It is what it is. See, there's another side to this epic tale of woe. This morning I woke up, took a shower, and put on some clothes that in no way resemble jammies. I went to a meeting. I had some actual adult conversations. I have some really nice co-workers, and it turns out that I missed them. One of them asked me for some statistics, and he allowed me a few minutes to get them without screaming in my face, wetting himself, or throwing up down my back.

So there's that.

a whale of a wife

I was aware, entering into this whole pregnancy/baby-having process, that people do the darndest things around expecting women. "Just wait," I heard, "the minute you start showing, strangers will put their hands all over you. You won't believe it. It will be like your belly is a magic lamp, and the general population is Aladdin. Like your baby bump is a miniature horse in the petting zoo that is your body, and the citizens of the world are a four-year-old-child. Like your unborn child within is that weird clay head of Lionel Richie in the video for 'Hello,' and America is that hot blind sculptress..." You get the idea.

So I was prepared for this. Bring it on, people of earth!

As it turns out, at least in my experience, people have cottoned on to the idea that in general manhandling ladies is not appropriate, and therefore, not touching pregnant women we do not know has become standard practice. Much more common, and much less expected was the commentary.

I was an extremely big pregnant lady. I started showing early, and there was no guess work involved (is she?). Around six months, people assumed the end was nigh -- much nigh-er than it actually was. A typical conversation went like this:

Stranger: "Oh wow! You're pregnant. How far along are you?"
Me: "Six months."
Stranger: (shock apparent) "Six months?!? You're REALLY big."
Me: "I guess so."
Stranger: "No, I mean REALLY. When I (or my sister/wife/friend, etc.) was pregnant, I didn't look that big until the very end.
Me: ......
Stranger: "You sure you've just got one in there?"

I am a public services librarian which means I talk to people all day long. You can imagine how many times I had this conversation. By and large, I was able to keep a sense of humor about it. "Oh, people," I would think, shaking my inner head bemusedly. "You're so inappropriate." Of course, there were days when I wasn't able. Days when my husband stopped looking at me, when I'd just heard it too many times, or when the word "whale" or the like entered into play, usually coupled with the times that my back and feet hurt so bad I could hardly move, but those times were rare. This is because at the same time, a parallel occurrence was taking place.

Strangers were telling me I was beautiful and bringing me treats. People would make a point of stopping by my desk to tell me I was radiant, stylish, and on one very exciting day, to bring me brownies because "mamas shouldn't have to wait for brownies." I loved the smiles and the happy stories people wanted to tell me about how much fun motherhood is, and how much I was going to love it. My experience became a shared experience, and I felt privileged to be a part of this new collective. In this way, I loved being pregnant.

It's weird now, no longer being pregnant. When my baby is with me, people behave strangely in a whole new way (e.g. the other day as my husband and I were walking down the street with the baby in his carrier, a complete stranger passed us, noted the carrier - which was mostly covered, I might add - then power-walked backwards, craning her neck to see inside, then clapped my husband on the arm, stating "Good job."), but more on that later. When my son is not with me, it's like nothing ever happened. I am no longer note-worthy, just another face in the crowd.

It's not that I need the attention. Really! It's that this enormous, life-changing thing transpired. I'm forever altered now, both physically and mentally, but without my baby or my belly, you'd never know it. That's not a bad thing, it's just strange. For months, I carried my impending future in front of me (looking, apparently, as if my impending future was twins), literally wearing it for the world to see. Now it's just me again, and though I'm grateful for the autonomity, I have to admit that I miss the brownies.

enjoying every moment.

When I was a kid, my parents, in an effort to raise healthy, conscientious children, grew an organic garden, cooked with whole grains, and forbade us from eating refined sugar. As a result, my relationship with sugar was complicated. I coveted it. I wanted it passionately, and on the rare occasions when I got it, I savored it. I knew it had to last, because that goodness, that delicious, stomach-warming, mouth-humming delight is over all too fast, and after all, any refined-sugar-deprived kid will tell you: you never know when your next fix treat will come along. I ate cake crumb by crumb. I held candy on my tongue like a precious jewel, making it last far longer than any of my peers. I nibbled cookies with a trance-like reverential discipline that I imagine can be compared only to tantric sex. Perhaps this doesn't sound like such a bad thing, but I am prone to extremism. As each bite brought me towards the end, a sort of panic set in, making me hyper-aware of each morsel passing my lips. Each treat begins rapturously, with the enjoyment levels peaking around a third of the way through, then slowly declining with each bite. It's really hard to be in the moment when you know that the moment is finite.

I have a baby. He is the most beautiful, perfect little thing I have ever known. I love him with a force that I never dreamed possible; a love that leaves my nerves raw and my heart aching. I could stare into his enormous eyes with their impossibly long lashes forever, just waiting for him to burst into that gummy, drooly, fat-cheeked grin. I want to eat him up. Being a mom is a hundred times better than I expected, and I knew what to expect when I was expecting.

There's something about a baby that makes people want to drop knowledge on new mom. By and large I don't mind. I did my homework, and my parenting choices are well-reasoned. I'm confident, but open to other ideas. Honestly, there is pretty much nothing I'd rather talk about than my little boy. But there is one small thing...

Every parent I've encountered across the board has had the same piece of wisdom for me: "Enjoy every moment of this time, because it goes so fast."

Really? That's what you want to say to me? Saying something like that to a person of my temperament is akin to telling a hypochondriac that one of his moles looks "funny." Okay, first of all, you think I don't know that? Every morning I feel as though I wake up to a different baby. I sit up at night, smoothing the hair off his forehead as he eats, and I SWEAR I can see him growing. Let me tell you, there have been many tearful, 3AM renditions of "In My Life" crooned to my little boy. I feel as though I just got home from the hospital, and suddenly I have to go back to work in THREE WEEKS?!? It's the cookie conundrum all over again!! My maternity leave pleasure peaked sometime around 4 weeks, and ever since then, the anxiety levels have been increasing incrementally. Suddenly, I look into his little two-month-old face, and I see a teenager who hates me, college freshman moving away from me, a twenty-eight year old getting married. I see me at 40, 50, oh my GOD get the paper bag, I'm hyperventilating!

And another thing. There are days when I get thrown up on more times than I can keep track of. Days where I think to myself, 'is it even worth changing this shirt?' as curdy barf trickles down my back. Days when he's crying that awful nasal keening wail, butting me with his head, and clawing my extremely tender chest with his razor-sharp baby talons. Those days I do NOT savor, and then I feel bad because we have this FINITE amount of time together, and I should love every little thing about him, even when he pees on the wall as soon as I take his diaper off. Time is fleeting, after all.

As an adult, my relationship with sugar has more in common with crack-addled mania. The adult me around sugar is, well, like an amped-up kid (who was not me as a kid) in a candy store. See, I'm terrified of the end, of having nothing left, so I'm making up for time that I'm losing. The way things are going, I see one of two things happening: either I become the kind of helicopter mom that accompanies her son to prom (and possibly paves the way for his budding life as a serial killer), or I somehow manage to diffuse the ticking time bomb (see what I did there?) in my brain and live in the moment. Whatever happens, take heed: refrain from telling new (and most likely extremely hormonal) moms about how fast it all goes. She will tailspin into irrational panic and despair. Instead, try something more along the lines of: "every year is more fun than the last!" Otherwise, I will consider it an invitation to discuss the texture, smell, and color of my son's diaper contents. Don't test me people. I have a colorful vocabulary.